“I know.” And he drank. “But I learned something. The sex is so much better with people you care about and who care about you, too.”
“I can attest to that. Katelyn changed everything for me.” With a nod, blue eyes bored into his. “Are there feelings involved here?”
“No, not like that.” Emphatically, Matt shook his head. “And I don’t see it happening again.”
“But…”
“But nothing.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Except maybe I wouldn’t mind having a Katie or an Ava of my own, you know?”
Swallowing down the whiskey in his glass, Brendan stood, and clasping his shoulder, he winked. “I highly recommend it, brother.”
Down in the playpen, at least twenty naked bodies tangled together on the cushion-covered floor, fucking in various configurations. More bodies lay sprawled on the chaise lounge chairs lining the perimeter of the room. Kit and Sloan shared a nubile beauty on one of them. A couple of weeks ago, he would’ve had a hard-on just watching the scene, but tonight, Matt felt nothing.
Nude, he leaned against the wall, holding onto the filmy drapery suspended from the ceiling that covered it. A warm, wet mouth swallowed him whole. He didn’t look down at the blonde.
Matt closed his eyes, and tipping his head back, he imagined somebody else.
I’m coming for you, bunny.
And right then, the mere thought of her was enough.
It was tricky business, flip-flopping from working all night and sleeping all day to regaining some sense of normalcy when she was off. Night shift fucks with a person’s natural circadian rhythm. And that was why Gina worked six twelve-hour shifts in a row every two weeks—to have those eight precious days for herself afterward. She learned early on that two or even three wasn’t enough, considering the first one didn’t count, since she was practically comatose for most of it.
Of course, it was this altered state of consciousness that explained why she was at the bakery on her first day off that counted. Yesterday evening, still coming out of a brain-fogged delirium, Gina’s mother somehow convinced her to work this morning. They had a special order for two hundred and fifty cannoli.
Like, who in the fuck needs that many?
When Rossi’s opened in the ’50s,Nonnabecame somewhat of a local celebrity for the Sicilian confection. The torch was handed down to her mom when she and her dad took over the family business. As a young girl, there wasn’t anything Gina loved more than spending afternoons in the kitchen with her grandmother, so naturally, everyone assumed she’d take the reins someday. But they were wrong.
She glanced over at her mother, hunched over a stainless steel table as she painstakingly piped buttercream onto the three-tier cake for the Campisi wedding on Saturday. It was on account of that stupid cake Gina had to get up before the sun to make the damn cannoli.
“But I’m exhausted, Ma.”
“If you worked normal hours like everybody else, you wouldn’t be,” Rosemary said, reaching for the coffeepot. “When are you going to day shift?”
“I told you. As soon as there’s an opening.” Gina didn’t bother telling her there were two nurses with seniority on the waiting list ahead of her. It could be years from now.
“Quit that job.” Her mom handed her a mug filled to the brim. “You should be working in the bakery with me, anyway.”
Not again.
“Let’s not do this. Okay, Mom?” Gina curled her fingers around it and took a sip.
“Are you gonna help me?”
“With what?” she asked, taking the coffee and her sleep-deprived ass over to the kitchen table.
“Sara took a large cannoli order, and I already have a wedding cake to do on top of everything else.”
Gina adjusted the clip holding her hair up and sighed. “Let Sara do the cannoli then.”
“She can’t make ’em like you do.”
Bullshit.
Sara Malinowski Rossi, wife to her second eldest brother, Nick, had been working alongside her mother-in-law for nearly four years now. She was perfectly capable. Contrary to her mom’s misguided and arrogant opinion, a person did not need to possess an Italian bloodline to make authentic Italian food. It was a learned skill, for chrissakes.
Not having nearly enough energy to argue with her, Gina caved, and here she was, folding mascarpone into Galbani whole-milk ricotta cheese. Since it wasn’t the “traditional” recipe, Rosemary Rossi never used it in her cannoli cream filling, but Nonna had taught her that adding mascarpone, or even some heavy cream whipped thick, in with the ricotta made the dessert creamy and extra delicious.
